Her lips curled up in a small smile. “Fine. I’ll let you use the sword.” We landed right outside the main door to the Maker Hall, and her brow furrowed. “Will you be able to get in?”
I didn’t bother answering. I simply set my hands on the door and spoke the word of power I’d used to create it. Sanctuary’s energy was slow to answer. I could feel it curling around my feet, coiling around my legs, tasting me.
It didn’t like the armor I wore. It knew I had built it to help tear through its belly.I didn’t do it to hurt you, Sanctuary,I thought, mentally taking the ropes of power into my hands.I’m sorry about that. I’m here to save the Well, and Gavriel, and possibly Feather?—
A shock went through the braided strands in my hands, and a concept I knew filtered through. Then I was the one who was shocked.
“Your true leader is my Feather? What has that little minx been up to?” I mumbled as I set the ropes against the handle and spoke the word again to open the complicated lock.
The metal machinery moved slowly, as if it hadn’t been oiled in decades, but finally clicked open. I patted the snakes of energy on their heads and thanked them, allowing them to fall back down and immerse themselves in the fabric of the realm.
“Ugh. That is ridiculously amazing,” the woman said, and my heart ached at how like my love she sounded. Feather had obviously had an influence on Thysia.
“Mikhail named you Arabella,” I told her. “The beautiful one. You are still beautiful, Thyssy. Maybe even more so.”
“Because this form reminds you of her?” She smiled again, that holy purpose shining again. “Let’s go save the Well, hm? Then we can figure out how to get you back to her, even if Revel won’t go.”
I saw her thoughts, her intention and her need to divest herself of the pool of immense divine power that she held inside. She had been sent here to take his place, to release him from what had begun as a call to service and had devolved into a prison. I was stunned at the sheer force of the power she held to complete her mission. At the strength she exhibited to be able to move and converse while holding back a detonation that could level Sanctuary entirely if she lost her grip.
The power was dangerous, and precariously held. Now that she was awake, it was consuming her from the inside out, degrading her vessel with every moment her mission remained unfulfilled.
“Revel won’t go?”
“He says he needs to stay,” she murmured. “He’s glimpsed his future and needs to protect her.”
“Not Feather? Please tell me Revel isn’t interested in her, too.” I already knew how much Feather liked Revel’s thick columns.
“I’m not sure,” she said, taking my hand. “But I was given the resources for a task I can’t complete. If Revel won’t go, perhaps I can help you instead. It’s not like I can keep going like this.” She gestured to her center. “It’s enough to restore you, Raffy. I can’t think of a better sacrifice.”
She would give her life to cleanse me? I fell to one knee in gratitude, my heart racing at the unexpected hope she offered.
I was still kneeling when Gavriel arrived on foot, his tattered wings flaring out behind him. “Have you been inside?”
“No.” I rose and pushed the door open. The sound of bees was amplified by a thousand as we stepped inside. “After you.” Gavriel waved me in, but hesitated with his hand on the door, tilting his head as he listened to faint voices in the distance. “Perception’s guiding the younger ones to safety, but he’s the only one who can hear me. I can’t close it completely, in case Hope or one of the others needs my help.” He followed, leaving the thick door open a tiny crack.
I had to struggle not to tell them to let the rest of them perish. They’d hurt my little one, and I didn’t care if they all died.
The Maker Hall was much darker than I remembered, but filled with the same tables and tools it had housed since before Mikhail’s time. Against one wall sat the cauldron I’d fashioned for forging Celestial swords. On the other side was Mikhail’s living space. A bed, with piles of lush blankets and pillows, glitter scattered over the cloth. I sucked in a breath, wishing I could smell Feather’s roses and spice over my own sulfur and ash, but I could not.
On the far wall, the door to the Well of Souls—which looked like a nondescript earthly kiln—shuddered without stopping. I approached it quickly, acutely aware of the cloud of fine, silt-like powder shaking free. I inhaled and tasted the dust, then spat to one side.
“What is it?” Thysia breathed.
“A mistake I made after I went to the Abyss,” I managed to say, guilt stopping my words. I felt Gavriel’s mind brush against mine, and I let him see what I had done. He could not provide absolution for this crime, not when I would never forgive myself.
Azazel. Azazel, hear me.
I couldn’t see the one I was calling out to, but I could feel his pain and fear. Desperation. If he weren’t the only one who could hear me in Sanctuary, I would leave him alone. His mind was scattered, his energy too weak to begin with.
I had known Mikhail’s Apprentice since his creation. Azazel had been a dreamer, a poet. A fragile spirit, like a butterfly amidst falcons. I was shocked to see in his thoughts that he hadn’t pursued his gift of prophecy, but turned to Making instead. If he’d been trained to read his dreams, to interpret the visions I now sent every day and every night, he would have known who was calling him. He would have told Mikhail or Gavriel I was in need of a rescue.
But he was too weak; his prophecies became meaningless gibberish, even in his own thoughts.
Still, I was desperate. Each year I lost more and more of who I was, in my efforts to save as many souls in the Abyss as possible. I’d taken their smut onto myself, and freed some.
At first, I’d been able to keep the core of my soul pure by allowing the Abyss to coalesce on my external form. I had grown hideous, but that was better than the alternative: permitting the taint to enter my form and touch my spirit.
Small horns had recently formed on my head, along with a whiplike tail behind me, as if I were a caricature of some sort of devil. Nothing that had originated in the Maker’s mind, I knew that. No, the Abyss was drawing on the memories of the souls from Earth who, through twisted teachings during their lives, believed the Great Singer of Songs had consigned them to some fictional eternal damnation.
